STWR - Share The World's Resources

The world is heading for a "heavily signposted human development disaster" of needless child deaths, illiteracy and abject poverty unless urgent steps are taken to boost aid, open up western markets and end conflict, the UN warned last night.

By hailing the failure of this summer's G8 summit as a success, Bob Geldof has betrayed the poor of Africa

 

Two months have not elapsed since the G8 summit, and already almost everything has turned to ashes. Even the crustiest sceptics have been shocked by the speed with which its promises have been broken.

The G8 proposals on debt and aid represent serious progress, but the devil may still peer out of the details during its implementation.

It is essential we all scrutinise them closely, as Mark Curtis does (Comment, August 23). He is right to point out the obfuscation in the OECD's method for counting debt and aid into an overall development assistance number, mixing both the ongoing aid flows with the bookkeeping of debt relief, as if they were equal parts.

Donors get too much credit for some debt transactions. They should only be credited for the part of the debt deals which free up money for fighting poverty. The rules must be changed and donors charged with providing a transparent account of their delivery, just as the same transparency is demanded of recipients' use of those funds.

But Curtis is incorrect in his portrayal of the G8 debt deal, which met three important criteria on paper - additionality, so there is more money to fight poverty; policy clarity, so getting rid of the cycle of lending and forgiving; and no new onerous conditionality. True, there are details in the deal which have always been there and live in the nature of deal-making. For example, that the additional money donors have agreed to contribute to finance the debt deal will be shared among all poor countries and not just those countries that are part of the deal.

The truth about Gleneagles puts a cloud over the New York summit

World leaders are now preparing for the millennium summit to be held in New York next month, described by the UN as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to take bold decisions". Yet the current draft outcome simply repeats what was agreed on aid and debt last month in Gleneagles. The reality of that G8 deal has recently emerged - and is likely to condemn the New York summit to be an expensive failure.

The G8 agreed to increase aid from rich countries by $48bn a year by 2010. When Tony Blair announced this to parliament, he said that "in addition ... we agreed to cancel 100% of the multilateral debts" of the most indebted countries. He also stated that aid would come with no conditions attached. These were big claims, all of which can now be shown to be false.

Debt relief alone won't relieve third-world poverty

With President Bush at the table, the "spin masters" who put a victorious gloss on all his actions had little need to lower expectations concerning the outcome of the G8 meeting at Gleneagles - agreement by the G8 to debt relief is a major event. But we should not be fooled; much of the debt would not have been repaid in any case. More debt relief - encompassing more countries - is needed, but debt relief should be viewed as just a start. As Britain itself has pointed out, developing countries need more assistance and a fairer international trade regime.

Even after the increases in annual assistance promised by Bush in Scotland, the US will still be giving less than a quarter of its commitment of 0.7% of GDP. Of course, not all foreign-aid money is well spent. But the aim should be to improve the efficiency of government, to make sure we get the most value for what we spend. In this there have been marked improvements in recent years. For example, the World Bank has been allocating more of its money to countries with a proven track record in spending money well. It has been exploring new ways of "delivering" aid, sometimes using state and local governments where that appears more effective.